Hello, we are currently looking for a ghost/cloning solution that will allow us to quickly build/rebuild systems but also let us enter fresh product keys. We know Symantec Ghost and Acronis True Image are common solutions, but we are not sure if either will meet our needs.

Can anyone offer suggestions that can get us close to what we are looking for? Please feel free to ask questions so we can provide answers that will better describe what we are looking for.

You have two things you need to do. First of all, select any enteprise version of cloning software (Ghost is great and I personally like Macrium Reflect). With that software, you can setup a server and distribute the image over a LAN.

Secondly, you need to prepare your image to accept a license. You do this with SysPrep. Here is a MS article with a video that shows how to do that. If you do not use sysprep, you will have machines with the same SIDs and they will have problems working together on a managed network.

You have two things you need to do. First of all, select any enteprise version of cloning software (Ghost is great and I personally like Macrium Reflect). With that software, you can setup a server and distribute the image over a LAN.

Secondly, you need to prepare your image to accept a license. You do this with SysPrep. Here is a MS article with a video that shows how to do that. If you do not use sysprep, you will have machines with the same SIDs and they will have problems working together on a managed network.

I used Macrium Reflect Free for the last 2 years for single pc images, I just switched to Active Disk Image because I like it's scheduled server imaging as well as a more robust pc imaging feature set.

I used FOG for a year but it always seemed to be too complex or sketchy...I just rolled out 75 computers to 3 different areas using a Clonezilla/DRBL server using the BETA TEST instructions and it went extremely well. I will continue to use Clonezilla for mass imaging. It's simple and to the point! No fuss.

SmartDeploy is a great alternative to the products you mentioned. We support all Windows licensing scenarios and run Sysprep for you at deployment time. You use a VM for your reference machine, and the architecture is hardware-independent so you can deploy one image to any device.
You can check out this side-by-side comparison of Symantec Ghost, Acronis Snap Deploy, MDT and SmartDeploy, or download our free trial.

Our vendor page here on Spiceworks has lots of great resources too, or feel free to ask me any questions you might have!

Actually, I have been using my Symantec Backup Exec System Restore for small or individual deployments.

It will not deploy in mass.

BESR is an image level backup where the image can be taken live or cold. The images can be mounted as a drive letter in order to copy individual fies, restored to dissimilar hardware, or converted to VM..

When restoring win7 or server 08 you will have to have a boot cd in order to fix the boot track with the "bootrec" command.

You still will want to apply the correct license key even though the activation remains intact.